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The Telecom Digest for February 22, 2011
Volume 30 : Issue 45 : "text" Format

Messages in this Issue:

Re: Verizon screwed me, again (Steven)

Re: New Hacking Tools Pose Bigger Threats to Wi-Fi Users (Sam Spade)

Re: New Hacking Tools Pose Bigger Threats to Wi-Fi Users (David Clayton)

Re: Apple Is Weighing a Cheaper iPhone (David Clayton)

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Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2011 22:05:26 -0800
From: Steven <diespammers@killspammers.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Verizon screwed me, again 
Message-ID: <ijsvb8$tit$1@news.eternal-september.org>

On 2/20/11 8:11 AM, Telecom Digest Moderator wrote:
> This is getting obscene. Verizon did it to me again.
>
> As I wrote before, MegaPath abandoned service to my town while I was
> on vacation. I got home to find that my DSL service had been
> disconnected.
>
> There is another part of the story: I have been using Google Voice for
> my phone calls for a long time, because my son was running up
> hundred-dollar-plus phone bills calling everyone he knows every
> day. He assumed that I would pay the bill and do nothing - proof that
> youth is wasted on the young - but I placed "no toll" restrictions
> on the line and relied on Google to make LD phone calls.
>
> Of course, no Internet means no Google Voice, and my wife asked me to
> resolve the situation so that she could use the phone. I called the
> Verizon "Service" representative - I'll call her Anne - and asked to
> have the restrictions removed. She told me it would happen within the
> hour.
>
> After that, Anne told me that there was a pending order to remove
> Speakeasy DSL, and she sold me the second tier of Verizon's DSL
> service, with a scheduled start date of 2/23.
>
> Two hours later, at 4:30 PM on a Friday before a long weekend, the
> toll restrictions were still there. I called Verizon's number
> again. The man I spoke to said, again and again and again, that he
> wouldn't "yes me to death" at the same time he was trying to "maybe"
> me to death. He said the order to remove the toll restictions had been
> created after the DSl order, and that meant it had been due-dated
> 2/21, but that he would talk to the order bureau to try to get it
> changed back to the date I had been guaranteed. The order bureau, he
> told me, closes at Six PM: I suspect that was also the time when his
> shift ended. The toll restrictions are still in place.
>
> I know what happened: Anne was eager to lock in her commission for a
> DSL sale before she left for whatever cave she calls home, so she
> broke her promise, lied to me, and left the first thing I had asked
> for as "last" on her to-do list. This is what passes for "service" from
> Verizon now, and I urge all my readers to switch to other companies.
>
> Feel free to mention my name.
>

Sounds like you are dealing with HellAtlantic.  Some years ago I was
working a trouble ticket and had to call back east, I called a minute
too early for their normal call time and was hung up on.  This was a
military circuit, so I passed it on to AT&T and that got it resolved,
but all those years it has left a sour test in my mouth.

Now that it is Verizon and I was GTE, at least most of the time old
GTE areas on the west coast you can get help, I'm not saying that
there are not problems, but I have never been treated badly.

***** Moderator's Note *****

I don't know where the call-taker was located, but I know she's a liar
and a discredit to her peers. I'm a "New England Telephone" customer,
since I live just South of Boston, Massachusetts.

BTW, does anyone know if the "Customer Service Representatives"
are/were unionized? Orders to use such shoddy and arrogant tactics
wouldn't be tolerated by any union employee I ever knew, so I suspect
the "Let them eat cake" attitude which I experienced is from a
non-union organization where the managers don't have any personal
pride or conscience, and where they can squeeze their subordinates into
deceiving customers, falsifying records, and giving lip-service to the
customer care standards that I grew up with.

Bill Horne
Moderator

Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2011 04:01:07 -0800
From: Sam Spade <sam@coldmail.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: New Hacking Tools Pose Bigger Threats to Wi-Fi Users 
Message-ID: <1eadnRx_Ka6Zyf_QnZ2dnUVZ_jmdnZ2d@giganews.com>

> ***** Moderator's Note *****

> 
> The solution is both easy and obvious: SSL. And as for security, any
> Internet cafe worthy of the name has its SSL fingerprint posted on
> every wall - and offers wired connections as well.

When I find any public spot with wired connections I'll let you know. :-)

Also, I doubt anyone involved in these public places these days can even 
spell SSL.

***** Moderator's Note *****

Anyone who uses a public hotspot without bothering to train themselves
about the risks and necessary precautions deserves what they get:
someone who puts sensitive information on an open hotspot is just proof
that a fool and her money were lucky to get together in the first
place.

Bill Horne
Moderator

Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2011 17:38:30 +1100
From: David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: New Hacking Tools Pose Bigger Threats to Wi-Fi Users   
Message-ID: <pan.2011.02.21.06.38.29.832445@myrealbox.com>

On Sun, 20 Feb 2011 15:52:15 -0700, Fred Atkinson wrote:

> On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 01:26:05 -0500, Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> Until recently, only determined and knowledgeable hackers with
>> fancy tools and lots of time on their hands could spy while you
>> used your laptop or smartphone at Wi-Fi hot spots. But a free
>> program called Firesheep, released in October, has made it simple
>> to see what other users of an unsecured Wi-Fi network are doing and
>> then log on as them at the sites they visited.
>
> 	Only invades unsecured wireless networks?  Anyone who is
> running an unsecured network without WPA2 is advertising their
> vulnerability.
> 
> 	Has anyone here made themselves familar with a program called
> 'Netstumbler'?  Have you heard of 'War Driving'?
> 
> 	If Firesheep can only invade unsecure networks then what good
> is it?  You can invade an unsecure network without it.

Big difference in just connecting to a network and then being able to
"see what other users of an unsecured Wi-Fi network are doing and then
log on as them at the sites they visited".

-- 
Regards, David.

David Clayton
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a
measure of how many questions you have.

Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2011 17:36:34 +1100
From: David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Apple Is Weighing a Cheaper iPhone 
Message-ID: <pan.2011.02.21.06.36.28.234328@myrealbox.com>

> ***** Moderator's Note *****
..........
> ... Or, Apple can continue to produce TinyType[tm] devices that are
> designed to be readable only by empty-brained twenty-somethings who think
> paying $100 per month for a friggin phone is normal.

Nice business if you can get (away with) it!

Just accept that these toys are for the not-yet myopic and not us way on
the wrong side of 40. We'll just wait for the direct optic-nerve interface
model to come to market.

--
Regards, David.

David Clayton
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a
measure of how many questions you have.

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